Edna O'Brien

by In the Forest (epub)

  ‘Excuse me,’ a girl called out.

  ‘Excuse me,’ he called back.

  Later that evening he left the stone outside her door and hid in the field on the far side of the wall. The door was closed on account of it raining. He hid for hours and watched the turf smoke going up and breaking into shreds. There weren’t many stars. There were clothes stooped in a big aluminium pan on the stove. The child was writing at the kitchen table. She sat next to him and from time to time went across and pounded the clothes with a wooden mallet and then took a drag out of a cigarette and inhaled it.

  When she came out to hang the clothes she was so close to him that he thought she would smell him the way he smelt her. She had a clean smell like the smell of the clothes and the white flakes she had washed them in. He could have reached out and grabbed her but he didn’t. She had trained the tilly lamp towards the line and the beams ran down one side of her face and neck and down the leg of the trousers that she wore. They were scarlet trousers, not the denim ones that she wore over in the school.

  ‘Eily, where are you?’ the kid called from the house. So she was not a Catherine, she was Eily and he was within a few feet of her, imagining the scream she would let out if he sprung her. Nothing was the same from then on. It was as if by some subtle unspoken signal she had let him in.

  The next night, she was standing up in the aluminium bath, blood running down her thighs, blood the bright red of fuchsia, blood like he had seen on his mother once and cried thinking she was going to die. It gushed. She poured the water from a jug and the blood and the water got mixed in together and streamed down her legs, less ruddy, the rest of her body white as milk. She went up to bed early that night, the child in her arms, already asleep. In his mind he went up the stairs behind them. He knew that stairs well, knew the missing step at the bottom and the steps that creaked. He knew the rafters where the thrushes nested in the spring. He saw a mother thrush sit there day after day and night after night, her eyes like glass beads. Once when she went off to get food he took the eggs and mashed them in his hands. The shells were a light blue.

  In the mornings, she washed outdoors in a big white bath, one that the Declan fellow carried across the field with three of his mates. It filled up with rain water and sometimes the kid played boats in it. The kid got on his nerves, the way she pandered to it, the way she kissed it for no reason, made chips for it and tumbled them in a wire basket like a lady in a chip shop. When they got into the bath together she had a long brush to scrub her back and scrub the child’s. She had a nail brush with a frog handle. Before she washed the child’s hair she undid the knots in it, picked them out one by one and then combed it and poured a jug of water on it and Maddie rebelled when she poured on the shampoo and scrunched his eyes and kicked her.

  One night she did something odd. She came back downstairs in the dark and lit a candle, then crossed to a wooden press and turned the long thin key and opened the flap doors. There was a golden figure inside it, cross legged. She sat in front of it, the same way as the figure sat and began to pray. She folded her hands and bowed her head. She was praying for something very important, he could tell. It made him cry. When he cried he could not stop, it was like when he laughed he could not stop, except that it was crying and it went on and on. She was a sad woman that night, not laughing and not smoking a cigarette. She had a book that she read from, like a prayer book and she kissed the page when she had finished.

  He crossed the fields, climbed gates and walls and then went along by the shore and past the empty summer houses to where his mother’s grave was. He had not been to it for over a year, since he went to England, and he lay down on the mound crying and explaining. His mother heard him but she did not talk back to him, probably on account of his having gone away and got put in jail for wrong things. Flowers and wreaths on a new grave caught his eye. He picked them all up in his arms and heaped them onto his mother’s grave. He slept a bit. When he wakened it was light and he decided to go back and visit the woman and bring some of the flowers and ask for a cup of tea and say he was lonely.

  When he got there he ranted because she had gone out. He tore up the flowers, tore the petals, tore the stalks and flung them everywhere. He knew where she kept the key under a flower pot and let himself in. Even before he pushed it he knew the creak of that door. Breakfast things were on the table. He ate cereal from a packet, held the packet above his mouth and funnelled it in. On the wall there was a calendar with a picture of a woman and a child, a golden child inside her chest. Underneath there was writing. He made out the odd word - ocean, deity, water, fire. The woman was all them things. Her folded tights were on a chair and he picked them up and examined them and took them for company.

  The following Sunday there was a session in the pub and she was there. Her hair was in small plaits, all over her head, like snakes tapping her. Surrounded by blokes. Blokes with earrings and leather jackets and guitars. She lapped it up. The blokes made much of themselves, getting out their instruments, setting them up, testing them, big pints placed down in front of them and in front of her too. She was wearing the scarlet trousers that she wore the night he saw her hanging the clothes. She had a matching jacket with some of the buttons open down the front. She had a necklace. A pouffe was set down for her to sit on. He stood outside the pub window, his eyes burning into her, burning into her smile and the open buttons and the necklace. She swayed in time with the music. The blokes reached over, whispering things to her. When she had drunk most of the pint one of them picked up the bodhran and laid it into her lap. After a lot of coaxing she began to beat on the goatskin, bringing every dead hair, every fibre alive. She beat it like a mad woman, like an African woman that he had seen in a picture. He banged on the window, making the same sound, believing that she would look up and see him and bring him in and say, ‘This is my friend.’ He would bring her up to the woods, to his hideaway and he would ride her there and she would ride him back because she had already made eyes at him in the school and in the post office, had given him scones to eat, like Elijah got. He drew nearer and nearer, his nose puttied to the window until a woman saw him and whispered to Gussie the owner.

  ‘You bastard . . . you pup you, get out of here . . . don’t ever let me catch you here again.’ It was Gussie the cripple with a beer mug in his hand and a posse of men behind him.

  ‘Fuck you all,’ he said and he turned but he did not run. They were afraid of him. No one of them man enough to come out alone but in a herd. He would have to act fast because one of the earring bastards fancied her, his thigh smack up against hers for the session, his skin-tight leather thigh against her pleated satiny folds.

  Easter

  It is a warm night, the sounds and smells coming through the open door, the smell of grass, pigeons cooing in the trees and a donkey that has been moved to a nearby field whining to be let back home. Her friend, Brigit’s voice on the tape sounds so near, so intimate, as if she is there in the kitchen with them. On the table, the dozen eggs, the two needles, a big white bowl and a whisk, all in preparation. Maddie is on her lap and they lean in like school children to hear it.

  More and more people here in Holland make an Easter branch. It is a custom that has been revived. First we empty the eggs and then paint and varnish them and display them on a branch. It can be Pussy Willow or Forsythia or any branch. To empty the egg I take a needle to the top and to the bottom, pierce a hole and then place one of the holes to my lips. Then I blow with all my strength until the white and the yellow comes out completely through the bottom hole. It’s nicer to keep the hole really small but it makes blowing the eggs harder. Ever tried to blow a big balloon? This is the same. I use water paints, marker or glue glitter, cotton for hair and beards and sometimes paper hats to make a funny impression. I looked up in my symbol book and found this: ‘Eggs have been a symbol of spring since ancient times. Rabbits too are associated with the fertility of spring because of their ability to produce so many young. The lamb is an impor
tant Easter symbol. It represents Jesus and relates his death to that of the lamb sacrificed on the first Passover.’ Blow blow blow, dearest friends.

  ‘Come on now, we’ve got to blow.’

  At first Maddie loved it, puffed his cheeks out and giggled at the splutter of the yukky egg coming out of the little hole and the puddle in the bottom of the white bowl. Yukky. Yukky. Yukky. He dipped his finger in the yukky and tasted it and ran into the yard to spit it out.

  ‘I’m having a rest.’

  ‘I won’t let you paint unless you blow.’

  ‘Eily can blow.’

  ‘Mr Yukky can blow ... he has lungs.’

  ‘Mr Yukky’s gone on strike . . . Mr Yukky’s on his bike . . .’

  By the time he has come back all the eggs are empty and she has got out the paint, the markers, the glitter, the cotton to decorate them with.

  ‘Guess what ... I think there’s a robber out there.’ ‘Really.’

  ‘I heard him ... I chased him.’

  ‘How did you hear him . . .’

  ‘I heard him running over sticks . . . the demon.’ ‘Good thing I have you as a guard dog . . . Smokey is dozy.’

  ‘Is Sven coming?’ he said over-quickly.

  ‘You are a nosey one ... I don’t know. Why?’

  ‘I like Sven . . . me and him have good chats . . . but I like Eily the most, then Cass, then Smokey, then Declan . . .’

  ‘Then bed,’ she said and had to chase him before she got hold of him.

  The painted eggs hanging from the swaying branches are like jewels, scarlet and turquoise, wreathed in glitter and even as she steps across the kitchen floor, they begin to tinkle, their shells so light, so airy, as if they might shatter into smithereens.

  Cassandra

  I was Master of Ceremonies for the Easter Egg Hunt on account of my years in puppeteering, knowing how to play a crowd, how to work them into a dither, terrify them and bring them back down.

  Eily had bought the prizes in the pound shop -balloons, cheap little dolls, cars and colouring books. When the guests arrived she had already set up a bowl of hard boiled eggs and jam jars of water and paint brushes. Every child was invited to decorate an egg. They did squiggles and dots and we hawed on them to dry them fast. Eily went to hide them in the orchard and when she hollered and they were let out, they charged like barbarians, roughing each other, everyone wanting to be first. Screams which meant an egg had been found and another and another. Then a big lamentation from Maddie because he’d stood on his egg and broke it. He went in for one of his fits, turned blue in the gills and had to be laid down on the grass for his mammy to stroke his tummy and tell him he was the best boy. Two other children couldn’t find eggs at all, so two extra eggs had to be scrawled with a red marker and hid in a prominent place so that we could get on with the big attraction, the prize giving. They formed a line outside the kitchen door and each child in turn got a marzipan chicken, a chocolate egg and a little prize. None were satisfied. Everyone coveted the top prize which was a Transformer Robot and which Eily stupidly had put up on the mantelpiece. I knew it would lead to ructions. Me me me. Two boys tried to knock it over with a walking stick.

  In the end the grown ups had to have a secret ballot and the prize went to a little chap with black curly hair who never spoke. It turned out he was a mute. Then they stuffed themselves with sweets and chocolate cake, then they fought, rival gangs, Bang bang, you’re dead, I’m not dead, up and down the wobbly stairs, into the garden, up in the trees, peeing on one another, Kevin squirting the girls from his water pistol and mothers walking around the garden, admiring it, out of politeness.

  It was evening when we got ready to leave, the grown ups drooping, the children more feisty than ever. Two daddies came to pick up their brood and it was amazing the welcome they got. Kids descending on them, kids hugging them, kids jumping onto the running board of a vintage car that one of them drove. It was like the largest toy they’d ever seen and the daddy basked in their admiration of it.

  Eily didn’t want the day to end. ‘Let’s go to the pub,’ she said. Several of the ladies gave her that look as if she was a dipso.

  ‘We can’t take children to the pub,’ I told her.

  ‘Denny knows me ... he knows Maddie. We’re regulars ... we go for a pint at six.’

  ‘They’re tired . . . they’ll moan.’

  ‘A girls’ night out,’ she said with that soft pleading look in her eyes and the lashes fluttering a mile a minute and her saying Please please and me saying Another time.

  When I drove off I could see her in my mirror waving goodbye and in that wave I saw that she was facing isolation and I thought, Why did I ever let her bury herself in that strange old house with its haunted vibes?

  Blow Lady Blow . . .

  From behind a tall iron gate, patched with sheets of aluminium and looped with wire of every description, Lalla, the little girl is running as though she is shaped out of thin air, running between the snarling, yellow eyed Alsatians, in and out between the several caravans and among the men who are engaged in their sullen tasks, welding and hammering and soldering, men renowned for their cussed manners and their fights outside pubs on Saturday nights. Lalla is wearing a tartan skirt and dainty turquoise slippers with fluffy porn poms. She runs, indifferent to the men who are cursing her for making the dogs so excited, runs for the sake of running with a lightness of a bright steamer and when Eily and Maddie arrive outside the gate she calls out bossily, ‘You’re late, you’re late.’ The dogs converge on the gate and begin to leap up, their yellow eyes unblinking; hurling themselves against the wire, dropping back and hurling again, barking with a fierce and lusty malevolence and Lalla ordering one of the men to come and chain these savages up.

  Inside the cramped and curtained space of the caravan, four mothers sit in a quiet inertia, smoking, staring at the television as brightly coloured balloons drift through the stale air with a randomness. Lalla’s mother, Dell, cleans in the school where Eily teaches and they have been invited to make it a special birthday party for Lalla who is four.

  A small table has been laid with mugs and an iced cake and the room smells of cigarette smoke and a sickly sweet air spray.

  ‘I saw you a long time ago,’ Lally says touching Eily’s hair, the blue braid of her jacket and then her hand.

  ‘Where did you see me a long time ago?’

  ‘In heaven.’

  ‘She’s lying . . . she tells lies,’ her brother Shane says and ignoring him she holds up her best present, a plastic wristwatch the colour of raspberry cordial and she licks it to show how much she loves it. Maddie is tugging Eily’s hair at the other side, jealous, suspicious and whinging to go home.

  ‘We only just got here.’

  ‘Come,’ Lalla says and takes Eily’s hand and leads her to a smaller room crammed with bedding and boxes and two bunk beds where herself and her gran sleep. ‘Every morning we wake up at the same time and I say “Hello Gran” and she says “Hello Lalla” and it’s always eight o’clock on my watch and it’s eight o’clock at school and it’s eight o’clock for the cows out in the fields.’

  ‘She can’t count and she can’t read,’ Shane says.

  ‘I’ll spit at you,’ Lalla says and they have a spitting match and her mother calls in that they are to behave themselves and remember they are not alone now, there are visitors.

  ‘I like silver and gold and I like light blue,’ Lalla says, studying Eily’s mouth now in which there is one gold filling at the back.

  ‘Where do you see silver?’

  ‘Money.’

  ‘Where do you see gold?’

  ‘Teeth.’

  ‘Where do you see light blue, Lalla?’

  ‘In the sky. I like Mrs Quilligan because she has no kids.’

  ‘Who’s Mrs Quilligan?’

  ‘Teacher . . . she lets me play football.’

  ‘No, she doesn’t,’ Shane says. ‘She’s too scared to play football . . . she plays with
Hilda’ and from a cradle under the bed he takes out Hilda, a china creature in a pink fur attire from head to toe. Lalla snatches it from him.

  ‘Watch this . . . she can smile . . . watch this . . . she can walk’ and Hilda takes a few stalled steps and flops back onto the mat.

  ‘Watch this . . . she’s hungry’ and as she presses on her Hilda’s mouth opens, her fawn tongue glides out and with a little dropper Hilda is given some milk.

  ‘Watch this . . . she needs to burp’ and Hilda burps and Hilda says a croaky ‘Ta’ and Hilda yawns so Hilda has to be put down because Hilda needs lots of rest and Hilda is put into her cradle and brought off to her dormitory. Lalla returns with pictures of her favourite toys and boasts of the many things they can do; play football, go to war, go to hospital, get married, have babies and sometimes have twins.

  ‘I gave her a scary spider book and she got goose pimples,’ Shane says.

  ‘What’s goose pimples?’ she asks haughtily.

  ‘Goose pimples are this,’ he says and starts pinching her and as she screams, ‘I hate you, I hate you’ a startled mother comes in, dazed, wondering how she could have begot such unruly children. It is while they are fighting and their mother failing to keep them apart that Maddie comes io from the other room, holding something as if it is a trophy. In the one hand he has Hilda’s fur outfit which he has peeled off and in the other the magic bakelite box which enabled Hilda to walk and talk and eat and burp and yawn as she went to sleep. Lalla and Shane round on him as he is the enemy now, the baddie that hacked Hilda.

  ‘Let’s chop his head off.’

  ‘Let’s lock him up in the shed with the dogs.’

  ‘Let’s put him down the well.’

  ‘Nah, let’s fry him’ and as they band together to pick him up, he retaliates with vicious thumps and seeing that they will not be reconciled, Eily picks him up and apologises to the mother who runs on ahead to get the dogs chained up once again and all the while the balloons are drifting idly and harmlessly through the air.